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Kaithe Dame
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Drifting PollenLilith’s Encroaching Shadow
Lvl 7 Sandalphon (51/70), Bowser Junior, Rika, Roland
Word Count: 4371
Having arrived via drilling up out of the ground, the koopa kids’ first point of interest in all this was not about Sandalphon’s history with this big lady, nor about whatever ‘number’ she had, but instead her choice of insult, which prompted Jr to ask ”What's a ‘shit’ supposed to be?”
Rika apparently didn’t need to know to start using it, yelling angrily ”Whatever it is, you're a big one! A big shit!” up at her, incredibly furious at being called little.
Roland, popping out of one of the blood vessels using his daggers, shook himself clean. He had just heard the conversation while getting the blood off, and with the two kids’ reply to a very basic word he had a bit of a think. He looked at the two ‘kids’, looked at Lilith, looked at the two again, then seemingly decided on something. ”No point in talking with someone who insults you like that, kids. Daddy might need to get out his belt for this naughty girl though.” Roland said, drawing his gun and firing upon Lilith, before going in with his lance using the bullets as cover. Having gotten to Emotion level 5, Roland got his final EGO, and while he couldn’t re-use the page he got on this floor, having used it at a poor time, the EGO was pretty good. Sword Sharpened by Tears. He’d have to wait for a good time to use this one though.
Though she averted her eyes from the gunfire, Lilith barely seemed bothered by the impact of the bullets against her, and Roland’s lance proved no more effective. As far as Roland could tell, either the demon boasted high defense, or just a massive pool of health. Only Sandalphon knew the answer: both were true. Lilith let go off her staff and began to float, casting dark magic that streamed upward. A blazing purple orb quickly swelled in size over everyone’s heads, tracking their movements with perfect accuracy. At the same time, Sandalphon opened fire from atop a blue tile. “Get out of melee range, or deadly puddles will block you off,” the archangel called to him, her tone sharp and authoritative. When Lilith spoke up to mock and mislead, Sandalphon simply talked over her, even using her sigil to speak straight into Roland’s ear. “Listen to me. Lilith’s specialty is strong, undodgeable, arena-wide attack spells. Only constant healing will get us through this.”
At that moment Candy Shower activated. The first orbs plummeted down, followed by two more per person shortly after. The team got only a fraction of a second to dodge each one, and when each orb struck the ground it left behind a field of purple flame twenty feet in diameter. Even knowing the timing, Sandalphon got clipped thanks to her slow roll, then quickly moved out of the flames before she could take any more damage. “Only once we break her wings can her beams be avoided,” she urged. She couldn’t offer any more advice than that for now though, as Lilith kept the pain train rolling with Crossing Candy. Enormous red and purple stripes spheres of solid sugar, easily ten feet tall apiece, appeared around the edges of the arena and began to roll around. Sandalphon managed to vault over one, then drift back down to the blue tile she’d made in order to continue firing. Still, the puddles left behind by Candy Shower limited everyone’s movement, and their uncoordinated placement would be a hazard for what came next.
Well, it limited the movement of the ground pounders anyway. After rocket boosting out of the way of the falling shots, Jr and Rika took to the skies in the former’s flying machine, actively using the updraft caused by the flames below to rise higher and faster. As they flew, the prince produced a subtle shimmering blue aura that glowed brighter around any weapons around it, such as the car itself, and the pile of them Rika had equipped.
Despite this boon, Rika’s rifle fire and Disruption Cannons shots against the priority target wings still didn’t do that much damage, though they did start stacking up a poison dot and inflict a temporary 20% damage debuff onto the foe.
”Hey Sandy! If you know what she does, do you know how we can bring the pain too?!” Jr called out, as he got them up and level with, but some way away from, the giant woman’s face.
“Elemental light, divine incantations or miracles!” the archangel called.
Roland wasn’t as phased by the magic orbs as Sandalphon nor Lilith would think. Granted the 10 foot tall candy boulders he couldn’t do anything about and would have to dodge, the homing orbs he could Counter and Clash with which he did using his hammer, canceling out the first two weak starter attacks and also canceling out the puddles they’d summon around him. Meaning only one puddle actually appeared or did any damage to him. And now having dealt damage to his team, Lilith had the mark of the Villain over her head, taking 20% more damage from everyone. ”I’ve got an idea how to ” Roland said.
Using the EGO he gained at Emotion level 5, the area temporarily changed into a starlit cityscape with swords sticking out of the ground, Roland donning a starry knight’s outfit and a long black sword. Contrary to what one might think, Roland only thrusted with the sword a few times as tear stained shockwaves came from the tip and ripped into Lilith from long range, dealing moderate damage, but bypassing Lilith’s defense.
”Although that's all I’ve got for a while.” Roland said, going back to his normal weapons as the cityscape stayed for only a few moments. ”Sandalphon , are all her attacks these low damaging AoE attacks? Well, besides the candy boulders…” While he couldn’t deflect the already placed AoEs, he could deflect the things that came after him or allies if he was fast enough that placed the AoEs, granted he could only save himself OR his allies, not both.
Before Sandalphon could say anything, Lilith answered the question for him. Two huge arrays of dark vortexes appeared on opposite sides of the ceiling, stretching all the way to the roof. As they built in intensity, the archangel sprinted toward one side as fast as her legs could carry her. The demon giggled. ”Let’s try for a little more agony this time, ‘kay?”
“Get out of the middle!” Sandalphon urged.
The next moment enormous dark lasers spewed out of each vortex, filling the arena with pitch black and blue radiance. Though each side didn’t extend all the way to the other, between both arrays lasers covered the whole battlefield, undodgeable. A single one chunked Sandalphon for almost half her life, but if anyone failed to avoid the center where the two arrays’ lasers overlapped, they would be on death’s door. By now the Candy Shower had ended, so the archangel steeled herself against the pain to heal her allies for 51% percent life with ripples of holy water–unless, of course, Junior and Rika had flown beyond its range. Lilith did not sit idle, however, and unleashed Accursed Shackles. The resulting Curse of Nihility wiped the Seekers’ buffs (including the extra regen from Angelic Praise), prevented new buffs’ application, and inflicted Creeping Corrosion, followed by a room-wide dark magic pulse.
When she felt that familiar burning sensation inside her, Sandalphon’s eyes became stress marks. She knew all too well that Creeping Corrosion would slowly sap everyone’s life, steadily growing stronger until the fight ended one way or another. She could reset its drain rate with enough healing, except that it also reduced recovery by 50%. It was a curse designed to counter her. “The path to victory is narrow,” she called to the others weakly. “You must heed me! Follow my lead to minimize damage, or I cannot sustain you! If you have dispel, use it!” Roland’s ‘Villain’ mark was a good start, but if nobody on her team could dispel Lilith’s five self-applied 10% defense buffs, this fight would take even longer.
Jr and Rika were indeed outside of Sandalphon’s range of support, and for some reason didn't pause to heal themselves with jrs magic. Instead they continued their charge forward they’d used to avoid being in the center.
Right on a collision course with Lilith’s.
Worse, jr didn't even have his hand on the wheel, instead shoving the butt of his paintbrush into it to hold their course while the hand that had been on them gripped the cables linking Rika’s back to her gauntlets.
Power charged in the brush, and then flowed from arm to arm I to the ship girl, who stood, one foot on the dashboard, fists raised and glowing with power.
Holy power.
”Wait for it, wait for it, now!” Jr cried as they got right up in their foes face, before both cried out “Sibling Strike Storm” in a way that totally wasn't aped from Ness.
Still, what followed certainly was a storm of strikes, as Rika unleashed a barrage of punches at the air, each one unleashing a shockwaveof stunning holy light which thundered like a divine smite.
After a dozen punches however the shopgirls gauntlets overloaded, and with the recoil of the blows no longer holding them back, they were on a collision course. jr had to awkwardly wrench the cars controlled to the side using only the but of his staff, while also holding onto his sister so she didn't fall as gravity took full effect on her without her gauntlets holding her up.
Roland meanwhile had dashed out of the AoE towards Sandalphon, making his way out of the worst of it but taking a hefty clip of damage himself. With this attack though, and the healing from it, the only thing Roland lost was a huge chunk of stagger. Well, he decided to assist the koopa kids with his own attack, pulling out his Tearblaster and blasting Lilith with a powerful gust of wind to see if that’d help open her up.
Left somewhat dazed by the holy knuckle sandswitch Rika served up, Lilith took a little damage from Roland’s Tearblaster, but wind paled in effectiveness to light, and she didn’t have any physical armor for the compressed air to blow away. Sandalphon, meanwhile, had to spend those vital few seconds setting up a new tile with a Cerulean Mirage. With Coordination Protocol rendered useless by Curse of Nihility, she was in Concentration Protocol in order to reuse her skills with Rapid Analysis, but there would be no skill use until she charged them via attacking. And thanks to the weakness gained from her fusion with Azure, her weapon’s trigger would only unlock as long as she stood on a blue tile, unless her allies acknowledged her as their leader. “Stay near me!” she called to others, her typically deadpan voice about as raised as it could get. “Let me heal you!”, While Roland listened, Unfortunately, her other allies had other plans.
”Quiet, you. Don’tcha know that everyone learns at their own pace?” Grinning, Lilith cast a spell. Two arrays of vortexes appeared in the arena behind her, at ten, eleven, one, and two o’clock, from floor to ceiling. At the same time, a ring appeared around Sandalphon, closing in fast.
The archangel’s eyes narrowed as her pupils became exclamation marks. “She’s going to trap me! You need to-” Just then the magic completed, and heavy lasers blasted across the arena, each one passing harmlessly through Lilith to slam against the far wall. Only the cardinal directions were safe, but a flame puddle from Candy Shower still covered the opening at six o’clock, rendering it unusable. Even if the Seekers scrambled for safety and didn’t sustain a laser -or multiple overlapping lasers- they would be separated by the huge beams. At the same time Sandalphon -who’d taken refuge at nine o’clock- became sealed in a Candy Prison, unable to move a muscle while inside the sphere of translucent sugar. Dark magic began to bubble up beneath the prison, slowly but steadily, as the lasers died down.
Lilith cackled at the sight of the helpless angel. ”Forget what I said before–I don’t mind sending you to hell first!”
Roland was tired of this girl just spamming coverage abilities, so before he did what he was going to do, he parried a laser headed his way with his two hander, before dashing towards Sandalphon and hacked away at her Candy prison with his daggers, gauntlets, and mace to break it apart. Unlike Lilith, it seemed to crack with relative ease. He’d finish his flurry with one final attack at Lilith, this time swapping to his paintbrush and conjuring his vengeful spirit out of ink which rushed at and attached itself to Lilith, silencing her while it tried to rip and tear at her. Unable to speak for the moment, the demon merely curled her lip, and resolved to trap Roland next time.
Having just barely avoided slamming into Lilith post team attack, Jr and Rika’s flight path took them unhelpfully away from Sandalphon and into the 12 o'clock position and, due to the massive bright lasers separating them and her, entirely blind to what had happened to her. Instead, they took the brief moment while the beams were going off to restock on resources, Jr using Lucid Dreaming to boost his MP, while Rika merely took a rest, restoring her SP while waiting for her gauntlets to reboot post team attack.
Rika also deployed her Ichor Queen striker, who charged up lightning into her massive cleaver, which it then thrust towards Lilith, unleashing a lighting bolt, once they got visibility of her again. They also got visibility of Sandalphon’s situation at last, giving them just a moment to intervene, which Jr did via slamming a button on the clown car’s controles, which caused a hatch at its mouth to open, revealing a cannon that then sent a flaming balloon sailing towards the candy prison.
Compared to all the non-holy hits landed so far, the lightning bolt worked surprisingly well against Lilith, and it kept her busy while the rest of the team worked to free Sandalphon. Thanks to Roland’s well-placed blows, the Sweet Prison fell apart a chunk at a time, and the balloon bomb from Junior once the lasers died down sealed the deal. With Roland’s focus on his vengeful spirit rather than pulling Sandalphon to safety, however, she got floored by the dark geyser that went off a moment after she escaped. Still, it could have been much worse. “My thanks.”
Sandalphon kept her eyes on Lilith, however, as the demon kicked off yet another tricky spell. Finally she made use of her staff, with colorful magic welling up around its head. Sandalphon cottoned on to her enemy’s Saccharine Stun right away, but the archangel knew that the solution to this problem would be even harder to coordinate than the last. “Pay attention to the shapes and their order,” she warned the others. A moment later three copies of Lilith’s staff appeared around her, and when Sandalphon saw the shape of the crystals adorning them, she practically barked out her next order. “Squares, stay away!” After another second, the staves exploded into powerful square-shaped blasts, all overlapping Lilith’s position. Contrary to what one might expect, though, Sandalphon began running toward the demon as the blasts died out and three new staves appeared with circular gems embedded in them. “Circles, medium range, away from the staves!” She hurried to a specific spot, then stopped just in time to avoid Lilith’s magic as the staves exploded with circles, accompanied by a thick ring around the outer third of the arena. That left just one possibility as a final set of staves appeared. “Triangles, get to Lilith!” By Sandalphon’s estimation, however, she was not fast enough to reach Lilith by the time the next blast went off. Instead she stood still to cast Angelic Wings and heal herself to the point where Saccharine Stun couldn’t kill her.
A moment after the last set of staffs went off, Lilith snapped her fingers, and three more giant candies appeared: a pyramid, a sphere, and a cube. ”Pucker up, sweet things! You’re in for one hell of a treat!”
”This is way too much! Stop spamming like that!” Jr demanded, as he put pedal to the metal to try and follow the Sandapon’s call out. Well, after getting blasted by the first one anyway, that was certainly a good incentive to listen to the adult in the room and to dance to her tune. Tyres burned on the arena floor as he powerslid the clowncar around, blue sparks flaring at his wheels that then converted into a boost that meant they’d make it.
To make sure that arrival hurt, the kid summoned Blodia, prompting a red metal fist the size of the giant woman to slam out of the air and into the foe.
As this slammed down, Rika used her restored SP to fire off a second 4 shot barrage of disruption cannons, the blobs sticking to the foe and reducing her damage output even more, though the first set of 4 were due to expire very soon.
Then she summoned Vichya's Black Lance to the hand she wasn’t using to hold onto the clown car’s side, pointing it forwards at their foe intending to joust the woman who she demanded ”stop trying to ruin sweets for me you big shit!”
Being an agile fighter, Roland had no problems keeping up with Sandapon’s call outs. He started to notice that this was kinda like a dance or a game, instead of actual combat. There were zones of safety, and things were being clearly telegraphed. This girl wouldn’t last long in the City, that's for sure if she was going to be this combination of arrogant and ineffective. Once her wave of dodgable attacks was over, Roland moved to hit Lilith with his hammer, then jumped back ready to Furioso. Speaking of strong attacks, some of his EGO should be ready soon and he could help pile on some serious damage.
For a brief moment Sandalphon was dismayed to hear such continued profanity from Rika. Lilith was clearly corrupting the youth! The more pertinent problem, however, was that neither the children nor Roland seemed to understand her last instruction about the order of the shapes. “The sweets!” Sandalphon called after the melee fighters as they attacked Lilith, gesturing toward the giant candies they’d passed right by. To try and show them what she meant she hastily attempted to fire at the cube, forgetting that her trigger was locked. It took a heroic effort to keep her composure at that point as she ran over to whack the cube with her staff. “Break the cube!” Whack! “Then the sphere!” Whack! “Then the pyramid!” Whack! Whack! “Hurry!”
By this point, though, the cube was vibrating noticeably, and the sphere had already begun to vibrate as well.
”The wha-” Jr started to call back, only for his question to be drowned out as a volley of torpedoes Rika had launched from the shield that was paired with her lance went off. That sort of was the problem, as between the screech of his tires as he tried to pivot their vehicle around, and Rika opening up with machine gun fire over his head, it was rather difficult to hear what was being said, and that was before you got the massive room filling magical attacks Lilith was putting out.
Still, the vibrating cube certainly looked dangerous once he got eyes on it, certainly more so that it had been passively floating there when he’d weaved between it and the others, and Sandalphon smacking at it was a pretty clear visual representation of what needed to be done.
”RIKA! HIT THAT THING!” he yelled over the girl’s gunfire, prompting her to move the barrel towards the crystal, reconsider given the resulting friendly fire, and to then instead use her bullet jump, maneuvering thrusters, and grappling hook to launch herself ahead of the clowns car, and to deliver a vaultbreaker boosted punch to it.
Lacking any way to kill her momentum, she instead used the other hand to splattershot the floor before her with ink, letting her slide across it and decelerate rather than stumble and fall.
Jr arrived a moment later, dropping off Sho the ninja striker to hack at it with electrical scythes, while he himself unleashed a burst of ”Holy!” magic that struck all the shapes and Lilith as well, though odds were the stun component of that spell would not be helping. Once focused, the cube went down easily enough, though only Sandalphon knew how close it had been to detonation and she wasn’t about to share–not when the others were fixing to blow as well. She went to make another Cerulean Mirage, then hesitated, doing mental math. After a second, she conjured a mirage by Lilith.
Roland meanwhile knew it was important to do what needed to be done in fights like this, failure to adhere to the weird abilities of their opponent would be foolish and Roland knew all about the weird guests that appeared in the Library. If the goal was to destroy these shapes in a specific order, then that's what he’d have to do. With Jr. and Rika taking out the first one and the second one looking like it was going to go as well, Roland had no choice but to hit it with his stocked up Furioso. In a rapid flurry of attacks using each of his used weapons, Roland hacked at the sphere.
While the sheer power of Furioso couldn’t be denied, the act of swapping between so many weapons to strike with each -and only starting after the cube’s destruction- meant that Roland’s efforts were doomed from the start. Not even two seconds into his attack, the spherical candy detonated in a tidal wave of molten sugar that washed across the arena and sent all four Seekers tumbling, badly scalded. Thanks to her weak constitution and defense, Sandalphon got it worst of all, but she’d steeled herself for this searing pain–and what had to happen next. At this point the pyramid’s detonation was guaranteed, and while the others might survive it on death’s door she certainly wouldn’t. Not like this, anyway. As the final candy began to swell, Lilith’s eyes alight with malicious glee, Sandalphon dropped her staff and clapped her hands together. “In Ilia’s name…”
The pyramid exploded in another wave of syrupy napalm, and the archangel disappeared in a flare of holy light. When the volcanic goo washed past her, the light dispersed to reveal a draconic angel with scales of onyx and marble, and radiant wings of light. “See the light!”
Lilith ground her teeth together, her delight replaced by frustration. ”That’s cheating!”
Sandalphon extended her arms, summoning huge arrays of light screens to either side, then cast them forward in a battering barrage. Each impact charged her skills, and after just a moment, it was ready to go. With the chunk of dragon energy that the blast from Caramelized Sweets took from her, she would have time for only one skill, so she meant to make this count. “Celestial Skewer!” By raising her hands she lifted up brilliant orbs of holy water, then hurled them at Lilith as spears. Thanks to Rapid Analysis, this also healed the team by forty-two percent, but after that the show was over, and Sandalphon returned to her human form, breathing heavily.
“Listen,” she told the others. “This is far from over. I will use my powers to mark locations to run to or targets to prioritize. We can do this. We just need to focus and adapt.”
Roland’s Furioso did not allow him to dodge the sphere blast just yet, and he got hit by the pyramid wave. While his health was fine thanks to Sandalphon, especially with her healing that would come, the problem right now was Roland was close to being staggered and there wasn’t anything she could do about that.
Rika was a touch preoccupied with sprinting towards the clown car she and her brother had been using to get around to reply, which was presently flipped upside down after being blown away. Grabbing a buckled axle, she lifted the machine up, revealing her (slightly dazed from tumbling) brother beneath it.
Much to Rika’s relief she seemed mostly fine, post Sandalphon healing, but his ride was anything but, the machine having taken the brunt of the damage and being more or less shot as a result.
”Urrgh, and I just had that fixed,” the prince complained after his sister had picked him up, used her grappling hook to retrieve his dropped paintbrush and prompted him to use Esuna to clear his dizziness.
With him sorted, Rika finally had time to ask ”What did those ‘mark’s you mentioned look like?” In reply, a screen in the shape of a triangle appeared in front of her, about a foot away from her head and positioned directly over Junior.
”Neat.”
When Lilith checked her wings, she found them still operational, but visibly wounded. She hissed and turned her attention back to the Seekers with a smarmy smile. “Okay, dipshits. You’ve officially made me mad. I’m gonna savor the sweet, sweet sound of you screaming, and this time there are no more second chances to save you!”